About Us
Before social media I used to have a subscription to a monthly bookclub called QPD, Quality Paperbacks Direct. The small magazine would arrive in the post each month, there would be interesting reviews of new paperbacks just published as well as a Book of the Month, and recommendations for older novels that had just had a reprint. I’d go through this magazine with a biro putting a cross next to all the books that piqued my interest. Some months there’d be none that I fancied, and other months I’d choose three or four. Often these were books that I’d never have considered if I hadn’t first read the review.
Social Media arrived in the form of Facebook, then Twitter, Instagram and all the rest. I stopped buying books that were sent to me in the post (until I discovered the A place), and I developed a Waterstones habit — even now I can’t leave their shops without having purchased two or three books. But a while ago I felt rather jaded looking around the big chain bookshops — most of the interesting titles I’d already read, or I just didn’t want to read another novel about a woman who’s life disintegrates until she moves to the countryside/coast/Highlands where she buys a bookshop/cafe/giftshop and meets the man of her dreams. I was even tiring of the novels where a body (usually female) is found, the grizzled detective who’s battling an addiction/his ex-wife/his nemesis and is assigned to the case which, after much chasing, he finally solves. And most of the time these were the only books that attracted me in bookshops.
Well, thank goodness for the arrival of publishers and writers on Twitter and Goodreads. At last I’ve been able to get recommendations for books I’d never have heard about otherwise, but now I get to hear about great novels, and I get to find out more about the people behind them. Yes, of course you need to be selective on Twitter when it comes to writers — some just pump out tweet after tweet quoting their latest WIP (work in progress) or endlessly do #WritersLift (a chain-tweet where everyone adds their WIP). Neither of these things are necessarily bad, but rather like the endless articles on Medium that tell you how to go viral (it’s luck) they just get a bit tiresome on their own. There’s a simple rule of thumb on Twitter — for every tweet you put out plugging yourself, make sure you have another 20 (retweets and replies included) that are being social. It is social media after all.
This is where the Wye Review comes in. We love books. We read a lot of books. We scour #BookTwitter and #AmReading, we follow people who work in publishing, we follow authors, and most importantly, we’re always looking for the next book to read for ourselves. If you’re the same as us then get in touch (wye.review@gmail.com) and send us one of your reviews, because the more reviewers we have the more reviews we can read, and the more new writers and novels we get introduced to, so join us!
